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Excuse me for sounding a bit rude, but why is FBSD the *obvious* choice for intels? FreeBSD is the redhat of the BSD distro. It offers a ton of hardwards compatability (but not as much as NetBSD), it offers a handful of security features (but not as much as OpenBSD), and is easier to install. It's a very good choice for people who want BSD, but also want to game. This means giving up stability for speed, and security for convienence. I'm afraid it is not secure enough, at least from my experience, to act as a full time running server. A desktop, yes, but server no.

I have never heard anything on Mandrake except for personal preference and most people say to avoid it without giving it any details or information to back it up. Personally, I haven't een tried it, so I don't know anything about it. I use Red Hat & Ice Pack at the moment. Does Mandrake have a Server edition?

Actaully yes! Mandrakesoft has made desktop, server, and even firewall systems (aka a router box). Mandrake has lots of support, it is the second most supported distro in terms of software development, it also works with RPMs and has a feature similar to RedHat's app-get (on Mandrake it is urpmi). Installation is a breeze and it comes with plenty of goodies. Check it out sometime; I really reccommend it to beginners and advanced users alike.

AFAIK, apt-get is a Debian feature. RH uses up2date. Also, a bit of trivia, the reason Mandrake is so compatible with RedHat packages is that it was once based on RedHat (upto version 5 or 6, I think).
Cheers,
cgkanchi